II4 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to attain 6 feet, and other 27 to reach the fully mature girth ot 
7 feet. Under favourable circumstances teak attains very large 
dimensions. In the Kyaukmasin forest in Burma, 26 years ago, 
I measured several huge, but usually rather stunted, trees 
varying from 20 to over 24 feet in girth at 6 feet up; and 
gigantic logs have been floated out having the fine dimensions 
of 64 feet by 13? feet mean girth, and 823 feet by 10 feet mean 
girth. When quite fresh, teak timber is hardly floatable, but 
after being “girdled” and allowed to season on the stool in the 
forest for two or three years it is easily raftable. Although some 
of the finest forests have of late years been overworked, the 
measures taken for the protection of this splendid timber are 
such as to secure not only the continuous maintenance, but 
also largely increased supplies of it in the future. 
The SAL-TREE (Shorea robusta) occupies, like the teak, two 
of the distinct forest regions of India. It grows more or less 
gregariously in the form of a belt skirting the base of the 
Himalayan range, and clothing the valleys and lower hills to 
a height of 3000 to 4000 feet, while it also occurs similarly in 
Central India, extending from the Central Provinces into Rewa, 
Orissa, Jeypur, and Vizagapatam. It is a very hard, heavy, 
coarse and cross-grained timber of great durability, though 
it is a very difficult wood to season owing to its liability to 
warp and split. But as regards durability, strength and 
elasticity, well-seasoned sal is perhaps the finest of all the 
Indian timbers—except, perhaps, the pyingado or ironwood of 
Burma. It is chiefly used for railway sleepers, though also 
largely employed for general constructive purposes, such as 
bridges, piles, beams, etc. As it is not floatable, difficulty is 
experienced in extracting it in large logs from the forest. It 
is usually found growing on shingle and sand, or on loam 
resting on gravel. As it produces seed abundantly, and as 
the seeds ripen just at the beginning of the annual rains and 
germinate readily, the large-leaved and shade-bearing seedlings 
soon manage to choke all other seedling growth and to assert 
themselves gregariously. The young seedling crop, however, 
usually disappears year after year, either in consequence of 
frosts by night or of sun-scorching by day, while jungle fires 
kill them wholesale unless the area be specially protected ; 
and it is not until, after some years, the roots have penetrated 
down to a permanently moist subsoil.that the young plants 
